That Holiday Mum & her experience Punting with a baby
In the middle of the rainiest May ever, my husband, 10 month baby boy and I took a post-lockdown trip to Cambridge. We had thought about punting but with the weather being so awful and having the baby we didn’t pre-book anything and just said we would play it by ear.
On the morning we arrived it was glorious sunshine and as we were strolling through town we got chatting to the team at Let’s Go Punting and made the decision to jump straight into a private tour.
The tour lasted 45 minutes but felt really leisurely as the punt trundles along. Our ‘captain’ Ben not only was super knowledgeable but funny, and really made us feel at ease with having the baby on board. I personally loved the private tour – we had unrestricted photo taking opportunities and could be as chatty as we liked with our punter – but the punts are roomy and really COVID-safe with plastic screens so I think a shared tour would be just as fun.
It was hands down the best part of our trip and I felt like we saw the best of the city cruising along ‘the backs’ of Cambridge University. Cambridge is one of those places you feel like you intrinsically “know” {Carols at Kings, anyone?} but seeing all of the bridges and buildings from the river felt like a huge privilege and on a quiet Wednesday morning in May we felt like we had exclusive access!
Here are my top tips for punting with a baby:
- Pack small toys and snacks that you can pull out of your bag to keep little ones entertained. Whenever the baby got restless I just swapped one toy for another!
- Feel confident to leave the pushchair/buggy behind. The Let’s Go Punting stand was manned the whole time and it made life so easy just being able to step onto the boat with no baggage.
Thank you so much for your lovely guest blog post, Chloe aka That Holiday Mum.
We look forward to welcoming you and your family on board again soon!
